January 2011 – SmartPhone Snapshot – It’s Game Time!
Posted: January 5, 2011 Filed under: Uncategorized Leave a comment »It is safe to say that 2010 was the year when smartphones became mainstream. Besides having the ability to be loaded with cool apps and games (Angry Birds anyone?), smartphones really excelled in erasing the walls between communication channels and their associated buckets of contacts. By connecting services like Facebook, Gmail, Twitter (and if you are lucky, Skype) and merging them into a seamless way of interacting, we have started to see the promise of what Ex-Microsoft CTO Ray Ozzie called “ the post-PC era” where hardware, software and services are all fused together on a connected device. In fact, Facebook recently announced that a third of its 600m members access the service on their mobile phones.
Following the initial push the iPhone gave the sector, smartphones now make up nearly half of all new U.S. mobile device purchases. And the biggest beneficiary of this growth is Google. Devices running Google’s Android mobile operating system accounted for more than two fifths of all smartphones sold in the U.S. between June 2010 and November 2010. Android based phones are being activated at a rate of over 300,000 a day.
Interestingly, the three main players are pretty close in current U.S. consumer market share with Apple’s iOS at 28.6%; Android at 25.8% and BlackBerry at 26.1%. However, with Android’s rapid growth rate it’s a safe bet that Android should take the No. 1 position in the first quarter of this year. RIM’s market share is going to be interesting to watch as although they are still shifting millions of units, OS 6 with the revamped UI is functional and much better than previous iterations, but still lags the rest of the market. The Torch is a good device but from a hardware design standpoint, it just doesn’t score any cool points. RIM needs a device that is going to fire up customers other than die-hard BlackBerry fans.
Apple looks certain to release a CDMA version of the iPhone early this year and AT&T have just announced today that they will be releasing 12 Android devices – so the two main operators will have the full range of devices for their customers. Operator selection is not going to be as much of an impediment to getting the device you want this year so smartphone market share numbers will become more representative.
This sector is pretty exciting and this blog will be publishing regular updates on the winners and losers including how Microsoft is doing with WP7; HP’s progress with WebOS; Samsung’s BADA; and Nokia who have stumbled really badly in the smartphone market.
